SOMERSET — With about 50 articles listed for the combined annual Town Meeting — and the special Town Meeting that will precede it — on May 19, the Board of Selectmen has set an early starting time and approved the municipal budget with a scant $238,000 decrease.

Rather than the traditional 7 p.m. start time, Town Meeting will begin at 6 p.m. at the Venus de Milo on GAR Highway in Swansea.

This will likely be the last time Town Meeting will be held at the Swansea venue because the new, state-of-the-art Somerset Berkley Regional High School is scheduled to open in September, Selectmen Chairman Donald Setters said.

Setters made note of the five special Town Meeting articles to complete expenses for this year and 47 annual Town Meeting articles — expected to drop by a couple — and concerns about Somerset’s financial problems.

To offset residents’ concerns that the session could run late and cause a low turnout, Setters and Selectman Scott Lebeau agreed to the 6 p.m. time.

With Selectman Patrick O’Neil, who is a teacher, absent during school vacation week, the other board members decided to wait until Wednesday night to list the order of articles, including five citizens petition articles.

The board must sign the warrant by May 2 and have it posted by 6 p.m. on May 5, Town Counsel Clement Brown said.

The budget for the town and schools, Article 8 on the warrant, spurred debate between Lebeau and School Committee member Jamison Souza, who was part of a group of 30 people who packed the Town Hall hearing room Wednesday night.

While Souza was not present in an official capacity, he is a member of both the Somerset and Somerset Berkley Regional school boards and readily responded to wider criticisms. He’s not seeking re-election next month.

Lebeau cited two Somerset School District articles totaling $380,000 and another from the regional district for $86,000 on adjusted Chapter 70 funds. He questioned the timing of selectmen receiving the articles Wednesday and whether the requests circumvented the financial process.

“I’m fed up, like any taxpayer should be,” he said. "We’re hearing things from the school department that I’m flabbergasted by.”

As an example, he cited the approximately $13,000 per-pupil cost in fiscal 2011 and the regional school committee's decision this week to allow school choice, enabling up to 42 out-of-district students to attend the regional high school this fall.

The participating communities for out-of-district students would pay $5,000 per student under the state law allowing school choice.

The articles Lebeau criticized for reputably late submission included fiscal 2014 homeless student transportation costs the state reimburses the town in full the following year, and Medicaid reimbursements the state fully reimburses the town.

Page 2 of 2 - Each are about $190,000 this year, which has been the projection for months and is far greater than in the past, according to school business officials.

Lebeau accused the school department of accepting a budget last year that included reimbursements going to the town as they traditionally did.

“To me, this is bait and switch to the community,” Lebeau said, accusing the school department of “double-dipping.”

“I completely disagree with those comments,” said Souza during a debate that raged for about 15 minutes.

He did not know about the articles being recently submitted but said their assertion that rising Medicaid and homeless student transportation reimbursements should go toward the school budgets had been discussed by school and municipal officials and did not come out of the blue.

“I hate this division that comes with this board. We are one community,” Souza told Lebeau and Setters. “It’s not us against them. My advice to you is stop it.”

After summarizing different efforts the school boards have made, including a $137,000 lunch program deficit Lebeau criticized as falling on taxpayers to offset this year, Souza said those deficits were traced back to 2008 just three weeks ago.

Souza said mistakes have happened. “Now we’re fixing them,” he said.

“You’re not fixing them. We’re fixing them,” Lebeau shot back.

He and Setters said selectmen planned to attend Tuesday night’s Somerset School Committee meeting when the budget is on the agenda.

Lebeau later acknowledged the $238,000 overall reduction in the municipal budget, totaling $21.9 million, was less than half their goal of $600,000.

But he said he wondered how the Somerset School Committee is closing Wilbur Elementary School to save $600,000 but still issuing a level-funded budget thus far for the annual Town Meeting.

“There is never the willingness or ability to reduce staff. We never get rid of anybody,” he told Souza.

Souza disagreed. He said 13 positions were eliminated this year, although the district retained some Wilbur teachers cut through retirement and attrition.

During a brief budget review, Lebeau told Richard Silvia, Playgrounds and Recreation Commission chairman, that he could not support a funding article to significantly raise their director’s pay. The proposal is to raise the grade, reverting to past duties, with a salary increase from $38,500 to $45,750, a 19 percent raise.

Setters said the $3 million the state recently funded to specifically offset Somerset’s drastically declining power plant revenues is softening fiscal problems.

“We’re getting a pass this year,” he said. “Next year will be different.”